Wednesday, August 31, 2005

Answering the Cantseefade WMD Challenge

Blogger Cantseefade challenged me to back up my story about Saddam's WMD cache with facts (see WMD post and comments below). These facts are readily available on the internet. Here are a few highlights:

The BBC talks about the 500 tons of uranium and 1.8 tons of yellow cake:

The United Nations nuclear watchdog has accounted for most of the uranium feared stolen from Iraq's largest nuclear site, Tuwaitha, reports say...About 1.8 metric tons of "yellow cake" and 500 tons of unrefined uranium went missing as the Iraqis left Tuwaitha unattended during the war.

David Kay, the former chief U.S. weapons inspector who was hailed by the press last year for pronouncing Iraq WMD-free, shared some interesting observations with Congress this past January about goings-on at al Tuwaitha in 2000 and 2001.

"[The Iraqis] started building new buildings, renovating it, hiring some new staff and bringing them together," Kay said. "And they ran a few physics experiments, re-ran experiments they'd actually run in the '80s."

"Fortunately, from my point of view," he added, "Operation Iraqi Freedom intervened and we don't know how or how fast that would have gone ahead. ... Given their history, it was certainly an emerging program that I would not have looked forward to their continuing to pursue."

Just to give you an idea of where this kind of thing can lead in the future, see the current Iran situation. This is from the National Review:

The mullahs have torn off their conciliatory mask in order to bare their fangs to us, the Europeans, and the Iranian people. If we had an Iran strategy worthy of the name, our confused leaders would have pointed out the remarkable interview with the chief nuclear affairs negotiator, Hossein Musavian. It was broadcast on Iranian television August 4th, and made it quite clear that the Iranians deliberately tricked the Europeans into giving the mullahs an extra year to complete a vital part of their nuclear program in Isfahan.

"Thanks to the negotiations with Europe," he bragged, "we gained another year, in which we completed...Isfahan." This was quite a coup, at least in Musavian's humble opinion: "We suspended (the enrichment program) in Isfahan in October 2004, although we were required to do so in October 2003...Today we are in a position of power: (the program) in Isfahan is complete and UF4 and UF6 gases are being produced. We have a stockpile of products, and...we have managed to convert 36 tons of yellow cake into gas and store it..."

Buying time by prolonging negotiations. Sound familiar? Saddam pulled a similar trick for 12 years.

Cantseefade, I have backed my story with facts. There are hundreds of other stories out there from legitimate news sources such as the BBC, the New York Times and others. Do you believe now?